Legal Question in Constitutional Law in California

Re: indentured servitude

Indentured servitude means, for all practical purposes, temporary slavery which ends when the underlying debt is fully paid. It is not the same thing as a loan -- be it a student loan, a mortgage, a credit card or what have you. Loans only obligate the borrower to repay the lender, while indentured servitude obligates the borrower to do the lender's bidding.

Despite your confidence that "a million law students have ask [sic] this very thing", I've never heard anyone else ask this question -- at least not seriously. I also wouldn't put much stock in the career prospects of a law student who accepts the premise that a student loan is a form of indentured servitude.

Moreover, I don't believe that the Constituion actually bars indentured servitude. The Thirteenth Amendment, which was adopted in 1865, bars both slavery and "involuntary servitude." Involuntary servitude, however, is not the same thing as indentured servitude, which is quite voluntary (except under some particularly extreme forms, where a man's agreement to such servitude encompassed his wife and children as well).

The original Constitution was ratified in 1789 and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791 -- a period when lawmakers were well aware of the evils of indentured servitude. Even so, it seems that this was not a topic they felt needed to be included in the Constition. This is really not much of a surprise, since the Constitution is also silent about slavery -- an accommodation to the demands of southern states which ultimately set the stage for the Civil War.